The financial sector continues to respond to the economic crisis by establishing regulations designed to protect banks, consumers and the economy. The introduction of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Principles for Effective Risk Data Aggregation and Reporting—also known as BCBS 239—now requires banks to convey the accuracy, completeness and lineage of their data.

Many financial institutions are facing significant spending and hiring efforts to restructure their systems and adhere to these regulatory requirements by the end of the year. IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog offers a fast, increasingly streamlined and cost-effective alternative that delivers a push-button solution for meeting these requirements and improving risk management.

Creating collaborative environments for business and IT

While aligning business and IT functions is essential for organizations in all industries, it’s especially important for banking institutions. Because of BCBS 239 regulatory imperatives, banks have to go beyond simply documenting business metadata. Now they also need to securely manage business terms, rules and policies and make this information accessible to the appropriate teams.

The InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog facilitates this management and accessibility by establishing a common vocabulary between business and IT. It also provides a collaborative environment that’s easily accessible using a web browser. This solution consolidates business policies and facilitates the evolution of information assets, even through changing market conditions, customer needs, competitive threats and future regulatory changes.

Capturing complete data lineage

One of the key requirements of BCBS 239 is that financial institutions need to be able to show lineage of data, including where it originated, how it has transformed, who handled it, what decisions it affected and other details about its lifecycle. The regulations also require that banks can verify that data is correct, consistent and complete.

Data stewards can use InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog to quickly examine the complete lineage of data through easy-to-digest interfaces and graphs. Because this information is exhaustive and easily accessible, it reinforces data accountability throughout the organization and helps banking institutions meet regulatory requirements.

Delivering a comprehensive solution

Banks that currently use IBM InfoSphere Information Server, IBM InfoSphere DataStage, IBM InfoSphere QualityStage or IBM InfoSphere Information Analyzer will find it easy to add InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog to their suite of solutions. Using these offerings together empowers IT professionals to take advantage of automatic population of the shared metadata repository and visibility into data-quality metrics.

This IBM solution is also compatible with non-IBM resources, offering support through open and published application programming interfaces (APIs) and open interfaces. For situations requiring further customization, IBM Services and IBM Business Partners are available to help create tailored solutions.